


we never found the answer (but we knew one thing)

by queenjameskirk



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Sad, some descriptions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 00:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenjameskirk/pseuds/queenjameskirk
Summary: Bill comes home late on Wednesday night.





	we never found the answer (but we knew one thing)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hikash0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikash0/gifts).



> this is a late christmas present to my great, neverending muse @hikasho. thank you for always supporting me and believing in everything i do! this one was inspired by a prompt you sent in AGES AGO so really you only have yourself to blame.

_ at seventeen, i started to starve myself _

_ i thought that love was a kind of emptiness _

_ and at least i understood then the hunger i felt _

_ and i didn't have to call it loneliness _

  
  


Bill comes home late on Wednesday night.

 

He doesn’t mean to do it, has no intent to stay out past curfew, but occasionally time just gets away from him. He pays no mind to the sky slowly turning orange and pink and indigo, no longer supposed to ‘come home when the sun goes down’ like he had to as a kid, knows his curfew is much later than dusk now. But he sometimes gets lost in his own head, focused on the task at hand, and loses a watchful eye on the clock. 

 

He’s at the library this particular night, checking out a stack of books for Richie. 

 

Richie has at least $20 in outstanding fines on his own account keeping him from checking out any new books and his past attempts at sneaking in alongside Bill to read at the wooden tables have been many times thwarted by the librarian. Bill wonders why she has it in so bad for Richie, why she marches him back out the front door with rolling eyes and disdain sitting heavy on her shoulders, when she’s always so polite and helpful to Bill. 

 

He picks up an armful of books for Richie, a few horror novels and one book that Bill thinks looks pretty funny, and a few for himself to peruse before he checks out and leaves. He sets his stack on the edge of his favorite desk, the one right near the far east window. It’s just far enough away from the librarian’s desk that he can read books out his age-range without fear of her confiscating them, but close enough to the rest of the library that he can still hear the hum of strangers’ breathing. 

 

Sometimes, when it’s rainy and gloomy and the library is empty save for him and Mrs. Starlett, Bill can’t concentrate on his reading. The silence gets to him, seeps through his skin and chills him to the bone. He doesn’t really know when he started being like this— afraid of silence, but it consumes him now. He seeks out life and sound and energy. 

 

Because when he’s alone, he feels a presence. 

 

He thinks maybe nobody else would notice it, wouldn’t pick up on the cold breath on their neck as they make dinner in an empty kitchen, but Bill does. He feels every shift in atmosphere, every push and pull of something alive and invisible and evil that’s stalking him. 

 

When he’s surrounded by people, he can forget it. But when the library is cast blue from clouds over the sun and the only sounds are the ticking clock and rustling pages, Bill Denbrough gets scared. 

 

He settles into his desk, scraping a chair across the wood floor so he can put his back to the wall and keep the entire room in his eyeline, and cracks open a book of his own. 

 

The sun sets over the bookshelves, plunging the stacks into darkness, but Bill’s desk has a lamp that hums with electricity and illuminates the pages of his book a soft yellow. It’s not until Mrs. Starlett drops the card catalogue loudly on his desk that he looks up to see a library blanketed in night. 

 

“I let you go a bit late tonight, Mr. Denbrough, but it’s time for the both of us to get home,” she says, looking at him over the rims of her glasses. Bill blinks and takes a look at his watch to find it’s already nearing nine thirty, far past when the library is supposed to be open. 

 

“I’m s-s-sorry, Mrs. S-Starlett,” he apologizes, gathering up his stack of books. The sound of them slapping shut is loud in the silence of the dark room and Bill winces as he stands from the desk. Mrs. Starlett smiles tightly at him as she writes down what books he intends to take home in the card catalogue, stamping their due dates in the front covers. He shoves them into his backpack as quick as he can, throwing it over one shoulder and pushing his chair into his desk. 

 

She follows him out the front doors, flicking lightswitches off behind them, and when Bill turns to look behind him, maybe in an irrational way to make sure it really is Mrs. Starlett that’s following him out of the dark building, he thinks he catches maybe a glimpse of something in there. A figure standing on the balcony perhaps, hiding behind the stacks and waiting for them to come back in and investigate. 

 

But Mrs. Starlett is already closing the door behind them, stepping out onto the front stone stairway and twisting a key in the lock, tucking it back into the pocket of her trousers and giving the handle a test pull. 

 

“You don’t need a ride home, do you Mr. Denbrough?” she asks, shouldering her large purse. There’s something about the way the moonlight glints off her glasses that catches the breath in Bill’s chest and he’s shaking his head no before his mind catches up with his stuttering heart. 

 

“N-no, m-ma’am,” he says, already backing towards Silver, locked to the bike rack. His fingers fumble with the combination, cold from doing nothing but turning pages for the past few hours, but he finally gets it open. When he looks back up, Mrs. Starlett has climbed into her car and driven off, leaving him alone on the dark street. 

 

He loops his other arm through the strap of his backpack and then throws a leg over the seat of Silver, pushing off the ground and wobbling slight before gaining speed. 

 

The beginning of his ride home is uneventful, Bill able to ride as quick as he can without having to keep an eye on traffic. Instead of going over to where Kansas intersects with Witcham, Bill takes the long way. He builds up speed and takes Up-Mile Hill head on, knees pumping and chest burning. He bypasses Broadway, turning his head only once to try and catch the glare of headlights before crossing the street without another care, and keeps going. 

 

He passes the Standpipe next, taking his eyes off the road to watch as Memorial Park flies by. The trees sway in the breeze, birds sitting on branches and squawking at him as he goes despite the late hour. The leaves are falling off the trees already, turning yellowed and orange before rotting in puddles on the ground. Bill breathes in deep the smell of decay and it makes his stomach turn and reminds him of home at the same time. 

 

Kansas Street takes him to Neibolt, and that is where Bill turns around. 

 

It’s been months since he’s come to this side of town, biking past the gravel pit and the trainyards full of dust. The road that leads to Neibolt is long, at an incline that makes the air in Bill’s lungs burn hot. He can see the cornfields that are on the other side of Route 2 from here, can see the way they bend in the breeze. 

 

He’s always been rightly afraid of cornfields. When he was a kid, he remembers his mom making him promise to never wander off into a cornfield, no matter how fun it might seem to get lost in the maze of towering plants. 

 

“You’d never be able to right yourself, Bill,” she said, absentmindedly cavalier about the danger in an almost cruel way, like she didn’t know the power her words had, “You’d get swallowed whole.”

 

Her concern for his safety was like an afterthought, like she forgot what she was supposed to be warning him of halfway through her train of thought and let it turn into her own musing about the danger of getting pulled into the black hole. Oblivion. 

 

Bill sometimes thinks he’s too much like his mother for his own good.

 

Nevertheless, her warning sticks with him forever and now Bill shivers when he thinks about walking straight into the six foot tall stalks and disappearing into a sea of green. 

 

He could take Route 2 back to where it intersects with Witcham but Bill really doesn’t want to bike along the rows and rows of corn tonight. The brittle stalks whisper as the breeze blows them into one another, whistling secrets and threats and promises, their leaves rustling together like paper. There could be anything out there hiding in the rows and rows of stalks, biding its time.  

 

When he turns back around, putting the cornfields behind him, he takes the steady decline of Kansas at a rising pace, and then turns onto West Broadway to cut back to Witcham. The lights of Greta Bowie’s house are dark, the shades drawn and the grass of the front lawn uncut. Bill puts his head down and pedals faster, his fun journey now tasting faintly of fear. His heart pumps fast in his chest, not because of the exertion, but because Bill worries that the sounds of his tires on the ground and the cracking sticks he runs over are too loud for him to hear if there were maybe something behind him, something following him home in the dark. 

 

He’s afraid that something came out of those corn stalks without him knowing and is now tracking him through the night. The fear keeps him from turning his head and making his nightmares into reality. Bill very carefully does not look over his own shoulder.

 

He doesn’t look both ways for cars before drifting onto Witcham, his bike tires kicking up fallen leaves. The trees that stand on each side the street in rows block out the sky. It shadows him from the light of the moon, now high in the sky and tossing shadows through the rustling leaves of the trees. Bill has the way memorized, knows every crack and bump in the road back home, but even so, the track is scary in the dark. 

 

He fears everything, everything that could possibly jump out from behind the trunks of trees and the parked cars that sit against the curb. He’s afraid of the possibilities that night grants the world, is scared of the things that blackness can conceal. 

 

He’s almost certain that his kind of fear didn’t used to plague his life, thinks he must have been courageous at some point, but that point is long gone and Bill relishes in the fear now. It gives him motivation, keeps him moving, reminds him that his life could be over before it has even begun. He lets the poison mixture of terror and adrenaline burning in his throat take him home, pulling up in front of 210 Witcham street. 

 

There’s no light in the windows of his own house, but Bill expects nothing less. He walks his bike to the garage and tries to quietly pull the door up so he can stash it inside. The metal creaks and groans as he pulls it open as slowly as he can, loud in the otherwise silent night. When he’s done leaning his bike against the wall, he pulls the door back down behind him and tries not to let it hit the ground too loudly. 

 

He steps quickly to the back door. He twists the handle but it sticks, not giving way in his palm. He jiggles the knob and peers in the window, but there aren’t any lights turned on in the kitchen either. 

 

Usually, Bill is the one who locks the doors at night. His mom goes to bed early on in the evening, complaining of a headache or a migraine or whatever she’s sick with this week. Then his dad goes out to his work shed to tinker around for a few hours, leaving Bill to clean up after dinner. He does the dishes while staring out the kitchen window into the backyard, watching the golden light that spills from his dad’s workshop. 

 

By eight, his dad is usually done with his time wasting and he too retreats to bed. Sometimes Bill is downstairs when he comes back in, reading by the light of the living room lamps or doing his homework at the dining room table. 

 

“Night, Bill,” his dad says, passing by without so much as passing a glance at his son. 

 

Sometimes Bill misses the casual touches, the hair ruffles and the hand on his shoulder and the brushed fingers of passing a bowl across the dinner table. His parents avoid his touch now, like maybe they’re afraid if they make contact with him, they’ll be forced to acknowledge his presence. 

 

The point is, no matter what Bill is doing at night, he’s the one who does the rounds of locking the doors. If he goes to bed without double checking he locked the kitchen door after his dad came in from the shed, Bill can’t sleep. He tosses and turns and sees visions of dark figures in the stairway of the basement. The fear runs his blood cold and the terror plagues him until he can work up the courage to go back downstairs and double check. 

 

It’s a small amount of control he can have over his own safety and Bill is deadly serious about it. 

 

The kitchen door being locked is no real problem, really, Bill tells himself as he rounds the back and returns to the front of the house. He tells himself his dad must have been working on something in the shed after dinner and didn’t see Bill around the house so he just locked it himself. There’s nothing to be afraid of, there is absolutely no reason to be suspicious. 

 

Bill’s heart beats like a chime. 

 

The wind continues to rustle the leaves of the trees on Bill’s block. He thinks back to the cornfield with its swaying stalks, hidden cover for something evil. He checks behind himself, glancing over his own shoulder with every few steps he takes as he rounds the house and runs up the front porch steps. 

 

The porch swing is rocking in the wind as well, the links of the suspension chains rattling and singing like a wind chime. 

 

The front door is locked too. 

 

The screen door swings open easily of course but the second door doesn’t budge an inch as Bill turns the handle. He gives it a secondary jiggle like he did to the back door but this one betrays him as well and sticks tight. 

 

Dad never remembers the front door. 

 

Sometimes Bill will come back downstairs on one of those sleepless nights and find the back door already deadbolted, his father having remembered to do it after coming back in from the shed. It doesn’t soothe the worry though, only abates it for a moment until Bill eventually realizes he didn’t recall making a trip to their rarely-used front door. 

 

He always finds it unlocked, the shiny brass deadbolt almost mocking him as he clicks it shut and pulls on the knob to make sure it’s caught tight. Bill doesn’t know how his dad forgets this door, how it could possibly slip his mind, but it always does. Sometimes Bill wonders if his dad really does lock the door and by the time he’s gone to bed, it has unlocked himself. He knows it’s a childish thought, that the doors couldn’t really unclick the deadbolt all on their own but Bill has seen stranger things in this life and takes his own safety more seriously than he does his sanity. 

 

The front door is locked tonight, unexplainably.

 

The fear continues to steadily heat Bill’s blood, his heart beating loud enough to echo in his ears. The wind chills him and yet Bill can feel a cold sweat staining his hairline and the collar of his shirt. His hands shake as he pulls his backpack strap tighter over his shoulder. 

 

Bill considers his options. The kitchen window doesn’t open, has been painted shut ever since Bill can remember for a reason he doesn’t know. The side windows would maybe be a good idea but his mom’s rosebushes are directly under the ones in the living room and her lack of care for really anything lately has let them grow wild, no longer getting pruned biweekly. He can’t imagine what their thorns would do to him lest he be unable to boost himself through the window and get knocked off balance into the bushes. 

 

He takes a step down off the porch, walking to where their personal sidewalk meets the public one and looks up at his dark house. The attic window is an obvious no and the room to the left of Bill’s is Georgie’s old room. He can’t find it in himself to break into that particular room, not on a night like tonight. 

 

Fortunately, despite Bill’s halfway-irrational fear of the front and back doors going unlocked through even one night, Bill never locks his own bedroom window. 

 

He would love to be able to flick the latch closed, to be able to put another barrier between himself and the outside world and sleep easier, but he can’t. Sometimes Bill has to compromise his safety for the sake of others and this is one of those things he just has to do. 

 

Because Bill has a few friends who sometimes need a place to stay, no questions asked. 

 

Richie has climbed up onto the porch roof multiple times to slip in Bill’s bedroom window, warning Bill of his ascent with a few pebbles he tosses at the glass like they’re in some dumb teen movie. Eddie has done it a few times too, certainly less graceful than Richie and definitely more annoyed about his having to get into Bill’s house the hard way. He’s a little shorter which Bill knows makes it more difficult for him to grab hold of the roof, but he uses the porch swing to stand on, grabbing for the roof while it swings beneath him. 

 

Stan did it too once, climbed up to Bill’s window in the dead heat of night. 

 

_ He looked up at Bill in disdain as Bill slid the window opened and instructed him how to grab hold of the gutter like Richie always did, pulling himself up to catch hold of the shingles. Stan had glared at him the whole way up in an almost impressive manner until he got inside Bill’s room. _

 

_ “Why can’t we just use the front door like normal people?” Stan asked, dusting his pajamas off before helping Bill re-make his bed. They took turns folding the sheets crisply and cleanly and when it was firm enough to bounce a quarter off of, Stan was able to slide between the covers and settle into bed next to Bill.  _

 

_ “R-R-Richie said it was more f-fun that wuh-way and now it’s j-j-just how we d-do it,” Bill replied as Stan fluffed his spare pillow and Stan rolled his eyes in that way that Bill thought made him look so much more like an adult than the rest of them.  _

 

Bill leaves his window unlocked as an invitation to those who need him. 

 

He tries not to think about how they’ve been needing him less and less lately. 

 

He slips his backpack from his shoulders and swings it up onto the roof, wincing as the borrowed books for Richie slam against the shingles loudly. Bill rubs his hands together and then boosts himself up onto the railing so he can grab hold of the gutter. 

 

The climb isn’t as easy as Richie makes it look. 

 

Bill knows he isn’t the most muscular guy in the world but he also would never consider himself heavy, and so it comes as a surprise that he barely has the arm strength to lift himself up onto the roof. He tries to use his feet to gain leverage, kicking them against a column like he’d seen Eddie do. His feet slide on the stuco, kicking a few times before finally grabbing a little purchase. Even then, Bill can feel his fingertips losing grip on the gutter and he struggles to pull himself up quickly before his arms give out under his own weight. 

 

There’s no way his dad locked the front door. 

 

The thought won’t stop swirling in Bill’s head even as he gets an elbow on the edge of the roof and uses his leverage to heave a leg up over the side. He’s fixated on it, can’t seem to shake loose the image of his dad turning the knob and pulling the door to make sure it locked tight before walking up the stairs to join his mom in bed. 

 

He’s shifting the images over in his mind, clicking them like the lock on a door, when the gutter finally gives. 

 

Bill figures he has it coming, has been testing its strength for something like a year without incident and it really is just his luck that the night it comes down is the night that Bill himself needs it. It would have been easy to simply let go of it and fall to his feet if he were still holding onto it, but unfortunately he’s got his hip resting on it as he swings a leg over and as it gives way, it tips him off balance. 

 

He tries to get purchase on the shingles but all he succeeds in doing is tearing out a fingernail before him and the gutter both go falling to the ground. 

 

He clips the side of the front porch as he goes down, his right shoulder slamming into the wood railing hard enough to knock Bill’s teeth together in his head. He bounces off it and lands finally in the wet grass of the front yard, the wind knocked out of him and his head swimming. 

 

Tears spring to Bill’s eyes as he writhes on the ground, clutching his shoulder with one hand and trying desperately to refill his lungs with air. His feet kick against the grass and he chokes and coughs once before he can feel the oxygen flooding back into his body and clearing his foggy head. His arm is screaming with pain, radiating all the way from his shoulder down to his fingers and then back up and across his chest. He breathes in deep and it makes his bones grind against each other and Bill bites down on his tongue to keep from crying out. 

 

He wonders if the sound of the gutter coming down was loud enough to wake his parents finally. He’s both hopeful and dreadful of them coming down the stairs and out the front door to see him sprawled out on the lawn with metal pieces of the gutter lying around him. He lies on the ground for a few moments, catching his breath and willing himself to stop crying, but his parents don’t come bursting out onto the porch. 

 

The wind shakes the tree in the front yard, a leaf falling off the branch and drifting down towards Bill, and no one comes outside to help him. Bill rolls onto his side, trying not to jostle his arm too much, and pulls himself into a sitting position. 

 

Part of the gutter is still hanging off the roof, swaying dangerously in the breeze as it hangs on by a single screw, but the roof doesn’t look much damaged beyond that. Bill rubs a hand into his shoulder, trying to maybe ease some of the pain away, but he hisses in a breath as the touch makes his skin burn. 

 

He considers ringing the doorbell then, banging on the front door until his parents let him in, but then he gets a memory of his mother’s dead eyes, of his father’s cold refusal to admit his existence, and Bill can’t imagine their touch being anything but cold and impersonal. The tears continue to drip down his cheeks and his nose is starting to get annoyingly stuffed up, and he doesn’t want them to see him like this. 

 

He’s gone so long without breaking down in front of them again, not since those first few weeks after Georgie’s disappearance. He’s been working so hard to be independent and strong and to hide in the corners and not alert them to his slowly dwindling mental health, and this is a major setback. If they saw him like this he’d be forced to confront the fact that he isn’t succeeding, isn’t doing as okay as he likes to believe he is, and Bill can’t let that happen. 

 

The problem begins with knowing he won’t be able to get the garage door back open with his arm like this and Bill isn’t so sure he’d be able to ride Silver so lopsidedly anyway. He spares a thought to his backpack still balanced at the edge of the roof and simply sends up a prayer that it doesn’t rain in the middle of the night before Bill wipes his nose with his good hand and turns around to walk back down Witcham street. 

 

It’s a lot slower without his bike but Bill somehow feels safer than before solely because he’ll be able to hear anything coming up behind him with only the sounds of his own shoes slapping against the pavement filling his ears. He sniffles and wills himself to stop crying as he walks, scuffing his tennis shoes through fallen leaves and trying not to let his hitching breath get any louder than necessary. 

 

Witcham meets Jackson which meets Main Street and Bill winds up in front of the Tozier residence before he can even think to wipe his tear tracks from his face. 

 

His arm screams as he uses his left hand to chuck a couple rocks up at Richie’s window. They clink off the glass and come flying back down at him but Bill doesn’t bother dodging, just hopes they don’t hit him in the face. He’s a bit awkward with his left hand but a few of the stones connect loud enough to echo and then Bill sees Richie’s beside lamp click on and bathe the room in yellow light. Bill throws one more stone for good measure before he sees Richie approach the window, wiping sleep out of his eyes. 

 

Richie slides the window open and leans out over it, peering down at Bill in his front yard. Bill unconsciously straightens his back, flexing his shoulders back and trying not to cry out from the pain. He figures it’s too late to pretend Richie can’t see the flash reflection of the tears tracking down his cheeks, but he hopes to hide the full extent of his injuries for just a little longer. 

 

“Bill?” Richie scream-whispers and Bill knows it’s a rhetorical question so he doesn’t dignify it with a response. 

 

“C-can you come duh-duh-down and luh-let me in?” Bill whispers back, hoping his croaking voice is loud enough to carry over the wind and rustling leaves. Richie nods, eyebrows furrowing, and disappears from the window. 

 

As soon as he’s out of sight Bill deflates, his left hand clenching into a fist and he makes himself walk toward the house, climbing Richie’s front stairs. He makes it up the first few and gets a sudden bout of dizziness. He darts a hand out to catch himself on the railing as he sinks to his knees on the third step, shifting to sit down on it as his vision swims. He hears the front door open as he’s breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth in an effort to stave off the nausea. 

 

“Are you okay?” Richie from behind Bill, his voice loud and startling in the darkness of night. 

 

“I think I have a c-c-concussion,” Bill confesses, holding his head in his left hand. He hears Richie take a few steps down to stand in front of him, letting out an annoyed sigh. 

 

“I think you have a  _ condition _ , dumbass, what the hell are you doing out this late?” Richie grills, and Bill squints his eyes and tries to think. 

 

He has no idea what time it is at this point, figuring it can’t be much earlier than ten-thirty, and Bill doesn’t want to lift his right arm enough to be able to read his watch. Instead he shrugs his left shoulder and even that causes pain, enough that Bill can’t hold in his wince. He knows Richie sees it because the boy clicks his tongue and tilts his head in that way he does when he wants Bill to spill his guts and tell the fucking truth. 

 

“What the fuck happened to you, Denbrough?” Richie questions, leaning into Bill’s space. Just the feeling of him so close, body heat radiating off his warm pajamas, is enough to make Bill want to cry again. It’s been so long without contact, probably days since last someone laid a hand on him in a comforting manner, and Richie is giving Bill his monthly quota of sympathy. 

 

“Door was locked,” Bill mumbles. He wants to move closer, to maybe rest his aching, swimming head against Richie’s chest, but he stops himself. He just needs to go inside and get into bed he thinks, figures a good night’s rest will have him feeling 100% again. 

 

“What door? Your house door? Why did that lead to you nearly puking on my front stoop?”

 

“I tried to climb the roof,” Bill starts but Richie cuts him off. 

 

“Why didn’t you just knock on the door? Your parents couldn’t have been mad at you if they hadn’t even realized you were gone in the first place!” But Bill just bulldozes on through him again, getting just a tad sick of Richie’s outraged reactions. 

 

“Didn’t wanna w-wake them. Anyway, the guh-guh-gutter finally gave way,” Richie is gaping at him but Bill keeps talking, half in the hopes of distracting Richie from yelling again and halfway because Bill just plain can’t stop babbling. “It wuh-was about t-time anyway, that old g-gutter was bound to c-come down eventually. I just had hoped it would muh-maybe be when you were climbing it b-b-because it’d be mighty f-funny to see you take a fall, T-Tozier,”

 

“Bill,” Richie interrupts but Bill is a runaway train at this point, his vision filled with spots and his lips quivering with the ache of holding back sobs. 

 

“And now I ruh-really can’t wake mom and d-dad because they’ll have a cuh-cuh-cuh-cow over the gutter and the siding and I’m probably f-f-f-fuck-” And that’s where it catches, where the words and the panic all catch up with him and start repeating themselves, a stop-gap keeping his weak explanations from leaking out all over the front porch. 

 

“Bill,” Richie tries again, reaching a hand out to cup Bill’s shoulder and it’s just his luck that he gets the wrong one, squeezing Bill right where he hurts the most in an unfortunate touch of comfort. It’s hurts like hell and Bill ceases his stuttering to cry out, loud enough that it echoes through the dark neighborhood and when he opens his eyes, Richie is staring at him in fear. 

 

“Bill?” Richie asks, no more than a whisper, and Bill shakes his head, the tears falling down off his cheeks and hitting the wood of the porch steps. “How bad are you hurt?”

 

“Not buh-bad at all, Tozier, ‘tis but a scratch.” Bill tries to say, but somewhere halfway through the quote his vision swims and then finally pitches backward into darkness, a swirling void that swallows him up. 

 

He wakes up to soft yellow light and warmth. There’s no hospital smell, no harsh cutting fluorescents to burn his eyes, but a lamp somewhere off to his left and a blanket resting over his lap. His head is resting on something soft like a pillow but also suspiciously warm, moving every few moments, and when Bill finally gets his wits about him and can focus, he can hear hushed voices. 

 

“I don’t feel comfortable calling an ambulance without his parent’s permission,” a woman is saying and then Bill recognizes Richie’s voice disagreeing. 

 

“You can’t call them, they don’t give a fuck!” 

 

“Language,” a man interjects but Richie keeps going. 

 

“They locked him out anyway! He tried to climb the fuckin’ roof! Dad, come on,” 

 

Bill feels heavy and foggy but he fights past the smoke to lift his head from the pillow, to get his bearings and figure out how to de-escalate the situation. But the moment he tries to sit up, he’s pushed back down by a soft but steady hand on his forehead. 

 

“Rest, dear,” the woman says and Bill’s eyes finally focus enough to look up and find Maggie Tozier glancing back down at him. She looks tired, eyes a little hazy with leftover sleep, and her hair is in a braid down the back of her neck. Then Bill realizes his head must be pillowed in her lap and flushes with embarrassment and shame. 

 

“I’m s-s-sorry,” Bill starts but Richie’s mom hushes him and turns away from him to look across the room. Bill follows her gaze with his eyes, trying not to turn his head too much, and sees Richie’s dad staring back at her with his eyebrows raised and an expectant look on his face. Richie isn’t far either, perched on the edge of the chair across the living room, his hair tousled and his eyes looking small without his glasses on to magnify them. 

 

“Billy, what happened?” Richie’s dad asks, his voice soft like he thinks he’s going to spook Bill. 

 

“He fell off the fucking roof, dad,” Richie interjects before Bill can answer and Wentworth shoots at glare at his son. Bill tries to think fast, to come up with a story, but he’s just so tired. 

 

He’s tired of walking on eggshells, of trying to be strong, and of hiding all the messy parts of himself. The lethargy sinks into his bones and his screaming shoulder and his aching head and the pressure forces the truth out of him. He’s just so fucking tired of lying. 

 

He stumbles through the story best he can, stuttering and feeling his tongue burn hot and go numb at the same time. His head aches in time with his pulse which pumps through his veins and makes his blood feel white hot. It seems to all pool in his shoulder, making him bite back tears every time he takes a breath and jostles his arm.

 

Finally he’s done, his story and his heart laid bare for the Toziers to see, and he finds he can’t stop the tears that drip down his cheeks and fall into Maggie’s lap. There’s a tense beat of silence before Richie’s mom reaches a hand up to brush away one of Bill’s tears and Bill squeezes his eyes shut in shame. 

 

“I’m calling your parents,” Wentworth decides, his voice ringing out in the quiet room, and Bill struggles to sit up once again and succeeds. His head swims as he rights himself but he pushes through the nausea to plead. 

 

“P-please don’t,” he says, voice wavering, “I j-just need some s-s-sleep, I’ll be okay in the muh-morning, I swear,” 

 

“It’s dangerous to sleep when you have a concussion,” Maggie points out, and Richie butts in. 

 

“Your fuckin’ arm is broken! That won’t go away in your sleep!”

 

“Your arm is hurt too, Billy?” Maggie asks at the same time Bill argues, 

  
“It’s not  _ broken _ !”

 

“I’m calling,” Wentworth interrupts, louder this time, “your parents.”

 

His word is final, both his family members sinking into silence and turning to look at Bill. He snaps his own mouth shut as well, sinking back and letting his head fall down to Maggie’s lap. He pushes down the shame and tries to soak in as much comfort as he can since it’s all going to get taken away as soon as his parents find out what he did. 

 

He recites his home phone number dutifully for Richie’s dad, voice flat and without a single stutter, and then closes his eyes and wishes to wake up in his own bed with all this nonsense having been a bad dream. Instead, he drifts into an uneasy rest where he tries to ignore Wentworth speaking hushed into the telephone in the kitchen. He feels Maggie start to slowly run her hand over his head, through his hair and down over the curve of his ear. It makes him suppress a shiver, her touch light but so heavy with affection. 

 

“Mom,” he hears Richie start but his mother hushes him with a single exhalation through her teeth. There’s a rustle and then a displacement of weight and Bill can tell Richie just settled down on Maggie’s other side. Bill can feel his heat so close, pressing into his mom’s side as she settles an arm around him and continues petting Bill’s hair with the other. 

 

Bill finally drifts off then, feeling both of their lungs expanding with every slow breath, and wakes to Armageddon. Wake is a generous word. Instead, Bill settles somewhere between coherence and sleeping, drifting through snatches of conversation that start tense and insistent and steadily grow more violent as time goes on. He tries hard to catch the pieces, to put the puzzle together, but the heat in his shoulder and the throbbing in his head keep holding him down underneath the water. Instead, he only holds onto sparse sentences one at a time. 

 

“He’s our son, we’ll see to his care ourselves,” Zachary Denbrough insists. 

 

“I’m not trying to imply anything,” Maggie starts. 

 

“He says he tried to climb the damn roof,” Wentworth argues. 

 

“He’s always been an athletic boy,” his mom counters. Bill can’t place where her voice is coming from but it seems far away, like she’s standing outside the house and speaking through the window. 

 

“He threw up on the front porch!” Richie exclaims. 

 

“That’s enough Richie,” Wentworth and Maggie chorus. 

 

“We’re taking him home,” his dad says, and that’s the last Bill catches before the pain comes rushing all back in at once. 

 

He’s being lifted off the couch, not nearly gently enough given his state, and he can’t help the yelp that falls from his lips. He sucks in a breath and the air smells unmistakably like his father but Bill would never call the scent a memory of home. It smells like wood and the shed and stale fear. They’re moving, probably towards the door so they can load Bill up in the car and forget this ever happened, and then they stop so fast Bill has to shut his eyes so he doesn’t throw up all over again. 

“Richie, move,” Bill hears his dad say, and Bill blinks open his eyes to find his friend standing in front of the open door, blocking their exit. Sharon Denbrough is standing over Richie’s shoulder, her arms crossed over her front as she loiters on the front porch of the Tozier house. 

 

“Not unless you take him to a hospital,” Richie says. At some point when Bill was passed out he must have gone and gotten his glasses because he’s staring directly at Bill’s dad and his magnified eyes look deadly. “You can’t ignore this,”

 

“Richie,” Bill croaks out and his friend shakes his head. 

 

“You can’t keep fucking ignoring him, he’s your  _ son _ ! He’s your  _ only son _ !” 

 

Bill can’t see the look on his dad’s face but his imagination is vicious in portraying the thundercloud. He opens his mouth to diffuse the situation but tension crackles through the room and keeps him from intervening. 

  
“Excuse me?” Bill’s dad’s chest rumbles as he talks and Bill feels it through his whole body. 

 

“Richie,” Wentworth warns, but Bill knows there’s no stopping Trashmouth Tozier when he really gets going. It’s like racing a train over the tracks-- even if it’s a tie you’re still the loser. 

 

“Stop treating him like a fucking ghost, you’re killing him!” Richie’s voice wavers, thick and sticking in his throat. Bill can see his eyes welling up and it makes his own chest feel tight and full of emotion. Bill doesn’t know the last time someone cried over him. “Take him to a fucking hospital or I will,”

 

“Richard, that’s enough,” Wentworth puts in and the use of his full name seems to make Richie pause. “Zachary, I’m sorry about my son’s behavior but he makes a good point,”

 

Zach Denbrough is not a man who is fit to be intimidated. Bill thinks perhaps he may have inherited that particular trait, not one to be scared or frightened by others. It’s a natural charisma, a strength that he tries to use for good but the man who passed it down to him uses it for the purposes of glamor. Zach puts on the happy face, the strong face, and convinces everyone around that he’s capable and in charge. It’s something Bill used to be in awe of but now he’s scared of the lie. His dad looks like he’s about to start the song and dance of getting out of this and Bill doesn’t know if the Toziers are able to resist. He doesn’t know if they’re stronger than the evil of Derry. 

 

“Dad,” Bill croaks, “It hurts really bad,”

 

His dad stiffens but doesn’t budge and Bill knows he was a long shot anyway. 

 

“Mom,” Bill tries, looking past his dad and into her eyes. He pitches his voice a little higher, a bit more childlike and fights to keep the stutter she hates so much out of his mouth. “Please, mommy.” 

 

It’s the weight that breaks the branch. He sees his mom flicker for just a moment, her hand coming up to her mouth as she cuts her eyes up to his father’s. She looks worried for the first time in a long time, ever since the police came knocking on their door that October day what feels like decades ago. 

 

His parents have a silent conversation with their eyes and then Zach is spinning around to face the inside of the house. 

 

“Thank you for all your help,” he says mechanically, “We’re going to take him to the clinic,”

 

Richie steps aside when Bill’s dad turns back around and lets them step out the front door without further fight. Bill looks over his dad’s shoulder at him and catches Richie angrily wiping the tears from his cheeks, a blush staining his skin. 

 

His dad carries him to the car, his mother opening the back door for him, and lays him down in the backseat. They don’t bother with seatbelts, just shut the door behind him and leave him in the silence. There’s a minute before they get into the car themselves, where Bill is alone to stare at the roof. Moonlight shines in through the windows and casts tree branch shadows over the felt interior. The swaying and twisting wood grows over the space, reaching hands and fingers into the blackness, and Bill hears pitter pattering of rain starting to fall outside. 

 

Then his parents climb into the car together, sitting down in the front seats in tandem, and Bill listens to the rain pick up. The ignition starts and his parents make a silent trip to the ER, the whole time with Bill in the backseat thinking about balloons and swaying stalks of corn. 

 

Bill’s backpack is still on the roof when they get home the next morning, station wagon pulling into the driveway and jostling Bill where he’s leaned up against the window in the backseat. He looks out the glass at it, close enough to the edge that it too could probably fall off given a stiff enough breeze. The gutter is still laying in the grass and Bill walks by it to go through the front door. It’s unlocked now that morning has come, Bill turning the knob with his left hand, and only a small part of Bill wonders if his dad unlocked it after all, or if the events of last night were just a cruel trick being played on him. 

 

“No more late night trips to the library,” Zach says. He’s perched on the edge of the bed as Bill reclines back. He’s got an ice pack balanced on his shoulder and is wearing his favorite pair of flannel pajamas. The doctors diagnosed him with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion, and after popping his bone back into place prescribed him with a hefty dose of painkillers and permission to stay in bed for the next two weeks. 

 

His dad sighs deeply, disappointed and Bill almost wishes things could go back to to the way they were before. It’s almost worse now, to watch his parents be forced to care for him. They keep tip-toeing, scared they’ll spook him into acting out again, but there’s no warmth there. There’s no fear over his wellbeing, no gentle hands tucking him into bed. 

 

“Yes, s-sir,” Bill agrees. 

 

“And I don’t want you hanging out with that Tozier kid anymore, he’s bad news,” his dad says. His voice is tight. 

 

“Dad--” Bill argues, but his dad silences him with a look. 

 

“I mean what I said, Bill,” he says. Bill swallows and nods, averting his eyes. He’d fetched his backpack from the roof outside his window and the library books are all soaked through. He’s laid them out on his desk in the hopes of drying them enough that Mrs. Starlett at the library won’t notice the wrinkled pages but he figures that’s probably a moot point. They’re Richie’s books anyway, Bill checked them out for him, and now he’s not going to be able to pass them over. 

 

“Yes sir,” Bill repeats robotically. His dad sighs once more and lays a hand on Bill’s leg above the blankets. It’s a heavy weight but not a reassuring one. Instead, Bill feels the expectations through it, the promises he’s making. His dad gets up then, pressing Bill’s leg into the bed as he leans his weight on his hand to stand, and turns to leave the room. Bill sinks back into the pillows, attempts to relax, but then his dad clears his throat and turns, back to the door. 

 

“I expect the roof to be fixed before winter,” He says, then turns and closes the bedroom door behind himself. The lock clicks shut and Bill listens to his steps echo through the hall and down the stairs. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> as always, feel free to send in prompts or requests to me on tumblr @cryingbilldenbrough and i promise not to kill your favorite characters unless you ask me to! 
> 
> title and lyrics at the beginning both from 'hunger' by florence and the machine


End file.
